The purpose of this essay is to put forward and elucidate the new meaning of continuity with regard to operation of religious mode of experience. Dewey defines education as a process of continuous reconstruction or reorganization of experience. Also h...
The purpose of this essay is to put forward and elucidate the new meaning of continuity with regard to operation of religious mode of experience. Dewey defines education as a process of continuous reconstruction or reorganization of experience. Also he refers to interaction and contituity as the two criteria of educational experience. So, the meaning of continuity should be clarified in order to understand significantly Dewey's idea of educational experience. However, there is no clear allusion to the elaborate character and structure of the continuity, except a few simple words that there is continuity between antecedent and following experience. In any case, the continuity can be found and explained in an ongoing experience in ordinary life. The essay takes advantage of the concept of consummatory experience as a model of educative experience. Consummatory experience consists of three stages and is carried out by integrative working of modes of experience. Religious mode of experience is a mode of experience by which an whole ideal is consistutied in consummatory stage of an experience. It is obvious that very experience proceeds on background of whole results-a whole ideal of life-which all of previous experiences have attained. Thus, an ongoing experience can be continuous with previous experience by functioning religious mode of experience. Besides, the religious mode in the late stage of consummatory experience gives birth to a new ideal of whole life by integrating the results of an ongoing experience with all the results of foregoing experiences, or a preexistent whole ideal. The whole ideal is inseparably connected with future and coordinates the real with the ideal which he who performs the ongoing experience strives to achieve in future. In conclusion, the continuity can be effectively and systematically explained with religious mode working in consummatory experience. The significance of the continuity can be summed up as follows : 1) the continuity means an integrated past-present-future in an ongoing present experience: 2) it integrates the real with the ideal.